Monthly Archives: September 2011

My Friend Joan

Posted on September 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

Whenever I am faced with a seemingly unsurmountable obstacle, I ask myself, has Joan done this, would Joan do this?  And it lets me go forward.  Why?  Because she picked up and moved three boys several times during her husband’s lengthy naval career.  When my dog died she had me bring photos and her favorite toy.  She made a collage of the photos, and put some of Chani’s ashes in a baggie in a large teddy bear that Chani took to the park the day before she died.  Joan sewed on a felt heart, and trimmed it with lace and tiny red and white beads.

I have the teddy bear here in the Rocky Mountains, one of the few personal things I brought with me 2 1/2 years ago.  Nine years ago my husband and I decided to get married, elope.  We asked Joan’s husband, the Captain, to marry us.  He disappeared to the dining room for a moment to compose himself and came back and said “yes,” he’d do it.  He wrote the vows himself and I typed them up for him.  I sent my husband over to their house that morning while I went to the hairdresser and got dressed.  It was a lovely wedding and luncheon for us and six guests who were at the elopement.  Then we headed off … but that’s another story.

Jim and Joan are like my parents, at least they were when we were out in California.  We miss them and the neighborhood’s not the same without them so we’d probably never go back.  They had a bet every year on the Army/Navy game, and it was an $8 bottle of wine.  Now Buck’s buried at West Point, and Jim will be, one day, at Arlington and when we go back East we’ll visit both.

Good friends are hard to come by.  Jim and Joan, Buck and Sally, are dear ones that are missed now because they’re gone or 1,000 miles away.   Enjoy your friends.  Live a good life.  Be happy.  It’s great to know people who’ve been married over 60 years!  If I could only live that long…. Cheers, Dee

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Who’s the smartest person you know?

Posted on September 26, 2011 | 2 Comments

My husband.  Physics major.  Software engineer.  He’s been inventing things since he was a child, even took over part of the family barn for a workshop.

His mother spent nearly five days telling me how awful he was to live with, how methodical he was.  I kept saying “I know.”  Now when I tell her that he spent four months making our then 7 year-old nephew a set of woodworking tools from antique stock, she only says, “I told you.”  Smart woman.

Years ago we were overseas and had dinner with his boss.  They talked a lot of gobbledygook and finally I asked whether this came pre SIT or pre-UAT.  His boss’ jaw dropped and he asked if I understood what they were talking about that whole time I’d been ignored at the dinner table.  I said, “I only know enough to help my husband get his next job.”

Ah, well, the manners pundits wouldn’t approve but it was apt at the time.  Cheers, Dee

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Problems

Posted on September 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Today, we hear of teenagers writing “autobiographies” as if they’d lived a life.

I didn’t know I had a brain in college and if I did, would have used it better.  Then I learned I could get A’s and B’s by coasting.  My strict upbringing led to me going to the library for a couple of hours a night and going out afterwards with the girls.

Junior and senior year I opted for “the stacks” where serious studying was done without social interference.  This was before computers and laptops and when I had the best bargaining tool in school, a 1943 portable Smith-Corona typewriter.

No, I can write e-mails and a blog and can even text a bit but I hate it because people think you’ll always be there and text right back.  I can be folding and putting away laundry upstairs and not hear a text come in.  Yes, it’s a life that has its household chores – someone has to do them.

Welcome to the feminist homemaker’s site.  I counsel friends on life and jobs, do research for my husband, write and edit countless texts, make a butternut squash soup to die for, clean and cook for my husband and the dog.

One thing I don’t have is an autobiography.  I hate Facebook because everyone posts anything on it.  I literally awakened and slept with one woman throughout the day and heard every thing she did.  Boring, so I quit.

What’s an old-fashioned modern woman to do?  Keep up the blog for now.  Thanks for reading.  Dee

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Fall is Here

Posted on September 26, 2011 | 2 Comments

The maples are a bright red.  This weekend the aspens started to turn bright yellow.  It hasn’t been long.  It snowed in June, so we had a foreshortened “mud season” that others in this nation call “spring” and summer.

I need the right light to get the camera out and get a few shots for you.  The nights are downright cold and I love having the upstairs windows open a bit, and my husband looks like a mummy with sheet, blanket and heavy comforter while I dangle my feet out and toss off the comforter.

There are already folks with short-ski roller blades and poles going down the path, and a new path underneath the State Road that will lead to XC ski-only trails.  There is a lot to be done here that has been put off due to the long and snowy winter, and only a few weeks to do it.  Luckily I kept my snow tires on, because I only drive a few miles a day, but others will need theirs soon.

In my “surprise” box I try to get every week from the farms that deliver our milk, eggs, and other items, I got one small butternut squash.  I made a very good and spicy curried butternut squash soup with it.  It made us two mugs of soup with one extra, that’s in the frig for lunch.

First, I halved and seeded the squash, basted it with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper and baked it, cut side down, for an hour in a 325 oven.  Let it cool enough to handle while you saute 1 medium onion.  I also toasted store-bought curry powder in a dry skillet until fragrant.  When you can get the flesh off the squash, put it and the softened onions in a food processor and process completely, adding chicken broth as needed.

I then placed it on the stove, added the curry and more chicken broth and let simmer.  I added more black pepper and cayenne.  Don’t thin it too much because you want to add about 1/2 c heavy cream at the end for richness.  We’d had lunch, carne asada, at one of our favorite restaurants so had soup and a turkey sandwich (a good one, made by me) for dinner.

Yesterday was the last Park Silly market, for the year.  Soon the Farmers’ Markets will shut down, without even making it to their peak this year though I had a couple of ripe peaches.  Then the snow will fall and look pretty through January.  After that the 14′ piles become grey, then black and melt through May and June.  Another year in paradise.  Dee

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Changes

Posted on September 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Being open to change is always good, as I see it.  There is always opportunity around the next corner.  We do so judiciously, less so when a bad economy forces us lily pad to lily pad.

But we’ve stuck with our home and traveled overseas for work, and put everything in storage and lived in a furnished place for a couple of years.

Change means more than that.  We get to know neighbors and co-workers and really love our current location.  We even have multiple people to take care of the dog, on and off-site, when we leave town.

Our neighborhood changes every week, as it’s a vacation town, but we always stay in touch with the locals, whether it be neighbors, restaurants, clothing stores, we’re there.  We are locals.

With the red trees in the mountain forests at their peak, now the Aspens are beginning to shine gold in the light.  Leaf-peepers may frequent the Adirondacks but we have great leaves, too, in the Rockies.  I’ll try to get some shots for you this week.

Stay where you are, have a great week and look at the Fall leaves, as we never had a Spring or Summer, only a really long winter and another one coming as most of the birds have left last week.  The coolest thing is seeing the cranes coming off the Preserve between 8-9 in the morning, and flying over the streets, wing to wing.  They mate for a lifetime, a lesson we might learn someday.  Cheers, Dee

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Who writes the best song lyrics?

Posted on September 23, 2011 | 2 Comments

Bob Dylan

In college, Dan Fogelberg

A Western cowgirl-poet, Juni Fisher

And a reverent nod to John Denver, who I now understand, living in the mountains.

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Veggie Dinner Disaster

Posted on September 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

First off, I’ve got to tell you that my father-in-law had to sell off 75% of his herd last weekend in Texas because of the drought.  Being on bottom land, he had more water than most of the other ranchers, also grass.  Now the months of excessive heat and drought have brought family farmers to their knees.

Joe was a dairyman for decades.  Family farms couldn’t compete with conglomerates and he couldn’t handle the herd alone so sold off the cows and started a cattle ranch on 600 acres.  Now he’s left with one bull and 21 others.

When the government gives money to farms it doesn’t go to small family farms.  When the milk and cheese people show gorgeous country farms, that’s not where our milk and cheese are coming from.

My husband was raised on meat and potatoes.  And milk (that’s another story).  So I decided to make a delectable vegetarian meal.  Homemade falafel on homemade grilled fry bread with tahini sauce, arugula and tomatoes.

It was a disaster on every level.  Basically, my husband was really tired from work so I decided to “grill” the fry bread indoors.  They came out like bricks and took over my main burner.

I got the other burner up to temp for the falafel and the first batch turned out OK and I put it in the oven.  The second failed miserably, sitting in cool oil and falling apart.  The falafel were really tasty, as was the tahini sauce.   This recipe needs a re-do by me because everything was tasty, it was my heat, or lack thereof, that created havoc.  And I can always buy pita bread and keep the best burner on.

I just wanted my husband to know what it would be like without beef.  Cheers, Dee

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Young Love

Posted on September 23, 2011 | 4 Comments

My husband’s niece got married last week, across the country from us and we couldn’t attend.  She didn’t have much of a wish list in terms of registry, as her husband’s culture doesn’t know that tangible and tacky fact of American society, so we went off the menu.

We would never give cash, though others did.  Both of their families love to cook and I know that they were already given knives.  So I gave them two of my favorite cookbooks.  I always give an out-of-print edition of James Beard’s Theory and Practice of Good Cooking to any bride/groom I know and love.

I added Julia Child’s The Way To Cook, to round it out and provide photos for some classic French recipes and others.

They got a new place to live, and are looking for furniture this weekend to make their new house a home.  I hope they have a shelf for two cookbooks they’ll have for a lifetime.  Here’s to promoting young love, Dee

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Chautauqua County

Posted on September 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

When you visit, as I had a number of visitors today asking about Concord grapes, please visit the farm stands and look at what else is fresh that you can cook today or take home.

Some of my best childhood memories are there, at a creek, a farm market, a local dairy or picking grapes, blueberries and strawberries.

Dinners with family, extended family holidays, and always hanging out with the neighbors were always welcome and exciting.  I think that’s why I wanted to learn how to cook, to please and always have a sense of family around me.

The enchanted forest and the road to the dump, the guy who came and took away our large furniture, only for Dad to find it all at his home.  Our neighbors with countless stray animals and a dog that came to us for a week at a time.

The horse that threw me, brownies and girl scouts, halloween in the populated part of town (couldn’t eat anything until my parents, the next day, went through everything).  Trick or Treat for UNICEF one year.  No-one bought into it with quarters.  I think I stuffed the box with some of my baby-sitting money).

Later on I worked summers in college and also worked on a couple of political campaigns.  I have family there.  My heart is there for the people I grew up with, but I don’t think our lives will go there unless it’s for retirement.

It is a place I have such ties to, and love to visit and encourage others to do so. Cheers, Dee

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Dad’s 80th Birthday

Posted on September 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Happy Birthday, Dad!

We wish we could be with you on this momentous occasion.  Loved the video, bro!

We love you, Dee and Jim

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